Ambivalence College Girls Creative

During the 1980's and 1990's,there had been a resurgence of research identifying the affective processes important in creativity.And alterative theories emerged to explain the underlying mechanism.Recently,the existence of emotional ambivalence,or the simultaneous experience of positive and negative emotions,has been studied.Thus,the effects of emotional ambivalence on creativity have become a new topic in this field.This research explored the effects of emotional ambivalence on creativity on the basis of existent theories of the influence of positive and negative affects on creativity.Two experiments explored the effects of emotional ambivalence on creativity and possible underlying mechanism.Experiment 1 examined and compared the effects of film induced positive,negative and ambivalent emotions on creativity.Experiment 2 induced the emotional ambivalence through gambles which led to disappointing wins and relieving losses,and examined whether the perceived typicality of emotional ambivalence will moderate the effects of ambivalent emotions on creativity.The main conclusions are as follows:1.Emotional ambivalence induced by film clips and gambles can facilitate originality and usefulness of the ideas people generated.Emotional ambivalence slows the pace of idea generation but enhances the persistence on the tasks.2.The perceived typicality of emotional ambivalence can,to some extent,moderate the effects ambivalent emotions on creativity.When feeling emotional ambivalence,individuals who perceive the emotional ambivalence as unusual demonstrate better originality than those who perceive the emotional ambivalence as typical.3.When feeling emotional ambivalence,individuals who perceive the emotional ambivalence as typical demonstrate better originality than controls,although worse than individuals who perceive the emotional ambivalence as unusual.4.Positive emotions facilitate the fluency of idea generation,but decrease the persistent time on creative tasks.5.Negative emotions facilitate the originality and usefulness of the ideas people generated,slows the pace of idea generation but enhances the persistence on the tasks.